When we see the adherents to this constitution chiefly
made up of civil and ecclesiastical gown men, and their
dependents, the expedient they have hit upon is not likely
to have the intended effect. There are many men destitute
of eloquence, yet they can see and hear--They can think
and judge, and are therefore not likely to be wheedled out
of their senses by the sophistical reasonings of all the advocates
for this new constitution in the country combined.
We know this is not true; and as we well know the design
of such representations, we would have those gentlemen
know, that it will not take. They must pull upon some
other string, or they must fail. Another thing they tell us,
that the constitution must be good, from the characters
which composed the Convention that framed it. It is
graced with the names of a Washington and a Franklin.
Illustrious names, we allow--worthy characters in civil society.
Yet we cannot suppose them, to be infallible guides,
neither yet that a man must necessarily incur guilt to himself
merely by dissenting from them in opinion.

We cannot think the noble general, has the same ideas
with ourselves, with regard to the rules of right and
wrong. We cannot think, he acts a very consistent part, or
did through the whole of the contest with Great Britain:
who, notwithstanding he wielded the sword in defence of
American liberty, yet at the same time was, and is to this
day, living upon the labours of several hundreds of miserable
Africans, as free born as himself; and some of them
very likely descended from parents who, in point of property
and dignity in their own country, might cope with any
man in America. We do not conceive we are to be overborne
by the weight of any names, however revered. "All
men are born free and equal;" if so, every man hath a
natural and unalienable right to his own opinion, and, for [Volume 1, Page 550]
asserting this right, ought not to be stigmatized with the
epithets of tenacious and dogmatical.